Big blow to Lalu and Congress alliance, 19 MLAs threaten Rahul Gandhi

The political situation in Bihar is most likely going to change again. First, the JD(U) witnessed a split in the party where one of the founding member and former President of the party Sharad Yadav rebelled against Nitish Kumar and formed another faction with the help of the members supporting him and now another split is possible in Congress in Bihar.

A large faction of the Congress in Bihar believes that the party’s association with Lalu Yadav damages the credibility of the party at a time when it is suffering electoral losses.

As many as 19 of the 27 Bihar Congress MLAs reportedly told Congress party vice president Rahul Gandhi to break the alliance with the Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, “at least for the time being”.

Congress MLA from Bhagalpur, Ajit Sharma who met Rahul on Wednesday said,”I told Rahul that Congress does not need an alliance with RJD in Bihar for the time being. If need be, we can get back to RJD prior to 2019 elections to defeat BJP for which Rahul and Sonia should take initiative. As of now, the continuance of alliance with RJD would weaken the morale of party workers in the state.”

He also accused RJD of being unfair to the grand old party. He said RJD used to give Congress those seats on which they could never win. Besides that, none of the posters of RJD’s recently held anti-BJP rally had photographs of either Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi even though Lalu kept using their names to promote the rally.

Meanwhile, Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee Chief Ashok Chaudhary has alleged the Congress High Command Sonia Gandhi to deliberately try to remove him as chief of the state unit.

While the 27 MLAs were called by Rahul Gandhi, Chaudhary skipped the meeting citing prior engagement. In his statement to the press, Ashok said that “I met Sonia and Rahul twice after Bihar CM Nitish Kumar dumped the Grand Alliance. As I had some personal engagements, I could not attend the meeting.” He said he will be meeting them in a few days.